Wednesday, August 24, 2005

For any of those moonbats who think that any form of Islamic Republic in Iraq (or even one just friendly to Islam) means Iraqi women end up "worse off than under Saddam, follow the link to Jason Van Steenwyk's Iraq Now (Countercolumn) blog.

Read the whole thing; its horrifying, but important in reminding us just how brutal this regime was, and how fortunate the Iraqi people (minus the mugs thugs and wackos) are to be rid of him and his sons.

It is not neccessary for me to advance anything more than the fact that Saddam was a brutal, sadistic, murderous, totalitarian dictator, in order to falsify the ridiculous notion that Iraqi women had enjoyed anything like western style equality under Saddam. Really, this argument reminds me of the old saws about Hitler not being so bad -- at least he made the trains run on time.

Don't tell me that in a world in which a woman would be targeted for gang rape for the actions of a relative, or that in a world where a woman could be beheaded on the whim of a Ba'athist with no due process that this idea of the rights and the affirmation of the dignity of Iraqi women have any meaning whatsoever.

Don't you dare.

Was Iraq the worst possible, most brutal regime on the face of the earth in 2003, when we invaded to topple him? Arguably, yes.

Could we have weighed all the reasons he was a threat, and in consideration of risks or self-interest, said, "Not now. It's not worth it"?

Sure, we could have. Would that have been more moral than acting militarily? Only if you would be willing to have many thousands more dead, many thousands more raped, many thousands more tortured, many thousands more ethnically cleansed, and quite possibly many many more thousands of innocent civilians killed in terrorist attacks by the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and God knows how many other shadowy terrorist groups Saddam was supporting, training, paying, and with whom he was plotting.

Please, if you want to answer, "none of that was proven," or there's no evidence of that, you need to slap yourself silly. Really.

About Me

Jeff has served in the US Army, Army Reserves, and NY Army National Guard since 1983. He deployed to Iraq as First Sergeant for the Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 642 Military Intelligence Battalion (MI BN), stationed at Tikrit, Iraq. 642 MI BN soldiers returned from the deployment without any combat injuries, and Jeff was awarded a Bronze Star for the deployment.
In civilian life, Jeff consults as a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) since 2001. Jeff is an Army certified trainer in Intelligence disciplines, and a certified trainer in Project Management. Jeff blogs at here at Dadmanly and contributes to the MILBLOGS group blog at MILBLOGS.